TSL Chapter 14 -- By jove! I'm being humble!

Summary

Trouble in Wormwood-land continues. Not only has The Patient second-converted, but he's being more realistic about it this time. No grand promises to obey every law, no lavish visions of perpetual virtue. Uncle Screwtape diagnoses the problem in the second paragraph: The Patient has become...

Humble.

This is bad. But there are things that can be done. Firstly, make him aware of the problem, so that he can be proud of being humble, thus slipping into a vice. Secondly, if his self-hatred can be mutated into hatred of other selves, or an inordinate self focus, that would be just as good.

Another good strategy: have him be falsely humble about something he's actually good at. Then his own mind will destroy his (aspected) humility because it's patently absurd.

In the course of explaining humility, Screwtape has to explain God's view of it. He describes prefect humility as a state where the subject has no personal pride in his accomplishments at all, even as he is clear-headedly aware of them, and recognizes all creatures (even himself) as "glorious and excellent things," but without what he calls an "animal self-love."

God, once again, takes something away (self love) only to give it back in a pure-er form.

Or something.

My Reaction

God Gives You Back Self-Love

You can always tell when Screwtape is going start preaching God's word: he exclaims with obvious, italicized exasperation that God really loves the vermin / hairless-bipeds / etc.

His view of humans denuded of pride is instructive. It's inhuman, the way the idealized people of St. Thomas Moore's Utopia are -- we can sort of imagine that level of self-abnegation, but to actually practice it seems impossible without divine intervention.

I think this is right.

To be a disciple of Jesus, you have to hate your family -- as strange and alien as this sounds (and horrible), I think that it fits with what we're being told: that the new 'us' will be indistinguishable from the 'us' we know. And the new love will be very different from love as we view it in our fallen, corruptible state.

Self-hate and Abjection -- the virtues we want to see in others

I'm always skeptical of tracts telling me to be more humble -- they have the whiff of hypocrisy about them. I'm sure that CSL (and any nuanced, sophisticated preacher) would first start by exposing their own issues with humility and present the lecture as intended for "all of us," (or, like Paul, to declare one's self the 'worst sinner of all!') but that sort of positioning is fundamentally tactical:

To get up in front of someone (or to bang out a chapter on one's typewriter) about advice, one has to be fundamentally sure of one's own standing.

And rooting one's certainty in God's word isn't always a cure. How many sports heroes are quick to credit God for their outstanding athletics? And how many really live lives of true humility?

I'm afraid I'm not buying it.

I think that the true test of humility is seen, not in disclaimers, but in how seriously one takes one's self. Certainty, triumphalism, and a scolding judgmental tone are often give-aways that the speaker takes himself pretty seriously. Not being able to take a joke, or seeing one's activities as centrally important are likewise, giveaways.

I think CSL reasonably passes these tests: he's not extremely humble, but he approaches this material with a sense of humor that -- I think -- reveals a bit of honest humility. And while I suspect that he might commit the sin of being proud of his humility, he at least calls this out in what feels like a self-directed barb.